Church members reject presbytery’s proposed change in property claim
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 30, 2006
The members of Harrisburg Presbyterian Church voted 72-22 Sunday to reject the Charlotte Presbytery’s proposal that the congregation revise its charter by making a commitment to hold the church’s property in trust for the benefit of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The vote left intact Harrisburg’s 1967 articles of incorporation. The charter says the church property and assets are for the “sole and exclusive benefit of the members of the congregation … without any right, title, interest or estate, legal or equitable, existing in favor of any denomination, presbytery, synod, general assembly, or other ecclesiastical body whatever; and with the exclusive right of the civil courts to determine who are the members of said corporation.”
The presbytery, through an administrative commission that has governing control of the congregation but cannot make property decisions, proposed a restatement of the articles of incoporation that would have ceded final authority over the property to the presbytery on the behalf of the denomination.
The congregational meeting was held after Sunday’s worship service and lasted about an hour, according to Carroll Alexander, an elder. Upset that the administrative commission declined to send members of the congregation copies of the 1967 articles of incorporation and proposed restatement before the meeting, Alexander copied and mailed them himself.
Following a lengthy presentation by a lawyer for the presbytery, who argued that the 1967 charter was outdated, Alexander was one of the church members who spoke at the meeting. He urged the congregation not to relinquish control of the property.
The vote on the presbytery’s proposal is part of a legal tactic that is recommended by the Office of the General Assembly to protect the denomination’s property trust clause in chapter 8 of the Book of Order.
Harrisburg Presbyterian Church, 15 miles northwest of Charlotte, is a 295-member congregation that was organized in 1967 as part of the Presbyterian Church U.S., which merged with the United Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1983 to form the current Presbyterian Church (USA).
Dissolution of the congregation has not been an issue in its long-running dispute with the presbytery. But there have been several flare-ups over the calls of ministers. And, according to the denomination’s official statistics, worship attendance dropped sharply – from an average of 140 in 2004 to an average of 72 in 2005.
Harrisburg is currently being served by a recently appointed interim pastor, the Rev. Warren G. Nance, an at-large member of the presbytery.